Hidden Hearts
by Charlemaine
Summary: Do monsters ever love? Is it possible to save the good from the evil? A common prostitute finds out when she makes the acquaintance of a strange, savage man.
1. An Unexpected Friend

**Chapter 1**

**An Unexpected Friend**

Katy gathered her things – make-up, cigarettes, the money on the table – and stuffed them into her purse. She took one careless look at the mirror, pinned up her flaxen hair into a loose bun and straightened her coat collar. The reflection that stared back at her was pale, lifeless, even with her freshly reapplied rouge. She did not like the way her mouth drooped at the corner when she was tired; right now she looked about ten years older than her twenty-two years. Sighing, she left, closing the door behind her. On the musty-smelling bed, the half-dressed man turned over in his sleep and murmured something about the wife.

It was a nice night, moonlit; the filthy backstreets of London looked shabbily romantic rather than decayed, dilapidated. It had just stopped raining; the cobblestones gleamed in the silver half-light.

Among the waste-heaps beside the back door of a diner, what appeared to be a heap of indescribably dirty rags rose, stretched itself and began sifting through the trash. He seemed strangely happy, eyes twinkling mildly in the dark – or perhaps that was the brandy – as he hummed to himself. Then he unearthed something fist-sized and mushy and tore ravenously into it, and Katy suddenly felt an upsurge of pity. She walked on briskly, the vagabond's forlorn humming echoing after her.

It was only a quarter of the way to where she was staying, but her journey was delayed by a lean, purposeful shadow that solidified and stepped into her path. He was young and sharp and dangerous. His breath smelt of cheap gin.

"What brings a pretty thing like you into a place like this?" A mocking voice, greasy and high-pitched.

She rolled her eyes. "Shut up." She stepped aside, and he did the same, blocking her way. From the darkness a thin silver weapon appeared.

"Is this the way you solicit business from a poor girl, Rag?" Her eyes widened with indignation in an effort to hide a dawning fear. "I thought we were friends."

"We _were_ friends until your clients got richer and you started turning me away from your door," he spat. "Poor hungry Rag. Deserted by his friends because he stank, because they could finally afford cologne and he couldn't."

She refused to reply. Her face was stony.

"You didn't want 'em to think you was doing me too, didja?" he asked nastily. " 'Cause I looked diseased or dirty, like, and you had a reputation for being clean. Didn't want your regular blokes fearing gonorrhoea, didja."

Katy avoided his gaze, staring into the distance. "We all have a living to make, Rag. Now leave me alone and go rob someone else."

He laughed – a short humourless bark – and retreated. She had not walked three steps when his knife cut into her throat. She stifled a shriek.

"For Godssake, Rag – look, I'll give ya money, alright? Take that stupid thing off my neck and you can have a nice warm meal and a bed for th'night, how's that?"

"He's not having anything."

The strange, cultured voice was that of a deep growl. Rag's coming retort was cut off as he screamed – the stranger had twisted his wrist with one swift wrench. The blade clattered harmlessly onto the cobblestones.

"Wh-what was that for, man!" Rag gasped. "What did I ever do t'you – none o' your goddamn business…"

The dark figure grunted contemptuously and flung him into the nearest wall. Katy winced as she heard a rib crack. Whispering and cursing, Rag dragged himself away, close to collapsing.

She picked up her dropped purse. "Y'know, you coulda just knocked him out, Edward."

He grunted again. "Some thank-you."

She hurried after his hulking gait. "Where were you? I thought you was walking me back."

Edward shifted a muscular shoulder in a sort of shrug. "Had some business to take care of with my lawyer." From his trench coat pocket he fished out a cigar and lit it.

In the spark of light, his savage countenance was briefly illuminated. It was not so much ugly or deformed as terrifyingly brutal. His was like a normal face that had been twisted almost beyond recognition and infused with a coldness that could, with mercurial speed, light up like the fires of hell just before he smote a victim. Insofar there was none who met him that did not fear him, except for Katy.


	2. A Conversation

Alrighty! For those of you who loved, liked, sorta liked or hated Chapter 1…I really don't care. Because here's Chap 2 regardless. Haha! No, seriously, review and tell me what you think. And thank you for being here with me. With enough support I may actually finish the tale. And now…on with it! Much love, Charlemaine 

**Chapter 2**

**A Conversation**

She remembered their first encounter. He was just another customer (or so she thought) but more brusque than most: he had plonked the money onto drawer and started removing his clothes, stripping down to his undershirt. She remembered the smooth powerful muscles rolling easily beneath the thin white cotton. Unexpectedly, he did not make a move toward her but instead sat on the bed and lit a cigar, taking long drags off it.

"Sir," she said, "why don't you come lie here with me?" She patted the empty spot beside her invitingly, arranging her slender legs in a comely position.

He took a long look at her, his immensely dark, intense eyes running from her milky forehead to the cleavage highlighted by her corset, all the way down to her toes; then went back to staring at the wall.

"You do not fear me?" he asked.

What a strange question to be asking a whore! She scrutinized his face for emotion, but found only hardness.

"Well…when you look at me like you just did, sir, I couldn't help but shiver…though it weren't a shiver of fear, exactly, if y'know what I mean."

He sniffed – a strong, fine nose that was – and seemed to find the answer satisfactory. After a while he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, elbow sinking into the mattress.

"Talk, woman," he said.

This was getting more and more curious. Women like her were not hired for their conversational skills. "About…what, sir?"

"Anything. I don't care."

"Well…" She got up and pulled on a sheer nightgown, then shifted closer to him – cautiously, because there was something quite intimidating about him, as if his body held a swelling mount of passionate fury that might burst forth at any minute. Katy was a forthright woman, but this man made her almost timid. "In that case, may I ask a question?"

There was passive silence, which she took as a yes. "What is your name, good sir?"

A small wispy cloud his lips. "Hyde. Edward Hyde."

"Mr Hyde…Edward. Can I call ya Edward? Mine's Katy." Tentatively she laid a hand on his broad thigh, expecting him to fling it away – but he did not. "Y'know," she added, "I feel like I'm at some kinda tea party, like, instead of one of my usual sessions." Despite herself, her gaze grew dreamy. "Perhaps…perhaps we're really seated all dainty and holdin' our cups and nibblin' sugar-coated cakes…and you, a gentleman whom I'm introducin' myself to."

For a moment he actually smiled – that is, a corner of his mouth lifted about half an inch. "I _was_ a gentleman."

"Oh, but I'm sure you can be. You talk diff'rent, you ain't just some randy working-class bloke or…well, you're just diff'rent, is all."

"No I'm not." Another grim half-smile. "I'm an ugly two-faced hypocrite, like any other specimen of mankind."

Katy raised an eyebrow and fell quiet. She didn't know what to say to _that._

"And you know what's better?"

"What?"

"I _like_ being an ugly two-faced hypocrite."

"Oh."

"At least, this part of me does." He blew out a long trail of smoke.

"What 'bout the other part?"

"The other part? The other part has never been to this side of London, and probably never will. The other man is a doctor of a flawless moral reputation who does not know a prostitute named Katy."

Then he turned to her for the first time since she had asked for his name, and inquired again, less brusquely: "You do not fear me?"

Feeling a bit more at ease, Katy took his hand in hers. "How can I, when you have not laid a hand on me nor raised your voice at me, even if y'had a right to? How can a girl fear a man who, for all his coldness, does nothing but sit on 'er bed and smoke?"

For a second, the faintest glimmer of warmth lit up the bottomless depths of his eyes. "You're the most unusual whore I ever met."

"Nay. I'm prob'ly the _only_ whore you ever met."


	3. Murderer

**Chapter 3**

**Murderer**

Katy shrugged off her outer clothes till she was down to her chemise and slipped under the thin sheets. She had a cramped little apartment with basic furnishing which she sometimes shared with Edward. Bunking with her did not, however, indicate a wish to procure her intimate affections, although he had readily admitted to affairs with a number of women – at least those who were not immediately sent shrieking by his menacing appearance.

He also told her, often in a passing manner, of the heinous crimes he had committed – a murder here, an assault there. She heard all this and could not believe half of it. Until he came to her apartment one night with bloodied hands.

"Why ain't you hidin' this from me?" she asked as he washed his palms clean. "I could hand you to the coppers, y'know. I mean, I won't of course, but I could."

"I do not hide it from you," he replied in his usual emotionless tone, "because as the only person who truly knows this side of me, you must know the truth. And the truth is that I am, quite simply, a monster."

She shook her head. "No one is ever 'simply' a monster," she said as she tried to scrub a bloodstain off his coat. "A person can be many things. A man once beat me up after I bedded him, just because he could, or because he liked to see me scared. That same man had a lovin' wife and daughter – I saw him walkin' in the streets with 'em the next day."

"Oh yes; so he, too, leads a double life. What if I told you that I am no better than he? In fact, worse…for most people are good and evil simultaneously, each side balancing the other. But when I am evil, I am completely and utterly evil. And as I have told you before, I _like_ being evil."

She looked down at the damp coat. "Actually, you said you liked being an ugly…two-faced something."

He grabbed the cloth from her to wipe sweat off his brow. "Same thing."

As he finished cleaning himself up, Katy studied his harsh, cruel, magnificent profile. "Are you being evil now?" she asked quietly.

Slowly, in an act of leisurely menace, he turned to face her. "I could kill you now without straining a muscle."

"But you won't."

"And why not?"

"Because you have no reason to."

Again, that terrible familiar smile. "I had no reason to kill a good man by the name of Carew."

The confession shook her, though she did not show it immediately. "Edward?"

"What?"

"Please…don't mention anymore names. I don't want to hear 'em."

He pulled off his boots, giving no sign of acknowledgment.

"I mean…" She struggled for words. "You stay with me, you put up with me mainly 'cause I listen to the terrible things you say you do, and I don't judge you for 'em…but if you were to put a name to – to those you killed, or hurt – " Her eyes glazed painfully with tears. "I don't want to judge you, Edward Hyde. You're one of the only friends I got. And," she continued with difficulty, "I want to believe there's some good in ya – I want to believe that you're, you're just a man who made some mistakes. That's all."

"I see." He put out the dim gas lamp. "You want to believe in a fantasy."

She could tell he was in a black mood, so she held her silence, shifting awkwardly on the creaky bed.

In the empty darkness that was left, he added quietly, almost to himself: "So do I."

That incident, the murder of Carew, had been four days ago. But the tension between Edward and Katy eased little. Though she still appreciated his company (as he must have grudgingly appreciated hers), she could no longer remain in his presence without thinking: murderer. He acted the same as ever toward her – indifferent, brusque, companionable in his strange way – but he must have known, too, that she now felt differently about the man who had been her friend in a lonely and dangerous world, and who was also a criminal and a heartless fiend.

It was frightening, the duality of man. One of the deep, morbid thoughts she had begun to entertain ever since she had chanced to know the mysterious, unpredictable Hyde.

She lay on her back, sheets pulled tightly around her shoulders, eyes wide open in weary sleeplessness. Unbidden thoughts stirred like restless mares in her head. Her throat was dry. Perhaps she should get some water –

A cold hand brushed her neck heavily. Without meaning to, she screamed..

Edward's dark, intense eyes looked into hers. In the dark his teeth glimmered as he spoke.

"You _do_ fear me."

Ashamed, she pulled her gaze away. She felt as of she had failed the test of friendship, if what they shared could be called friendship. Perhaps they had both failed from the start.

Minutes later she heard him gathering his things and pulling on his coat. He was leaving.

She never saw Edward Hyde again.

Ah, but will she see Ed again? I dunno. There's more to come after this chapter, though. Or possibly just a tying up of the plot (not that it's much of one, really). But it has been scientifically proven that reviews speed up the writing process! ;)


	4. But I Knew You Before

The last chapter! Don't be disappointed. But better short and sweet than long and…well, rambling, pointless, boring.

Feedback please! I love you.

cheers,

Charl

**Chapter 4**

**But I Knew You Before**

_1 ½ months later_

"Darling, _do_ hurry up or we'll be sweeping the scraps from the tables along with the serving boys," Lester Borden muttered. "This is an important party and I don't care how long it takes you to powder your nose; in five minutes I shall be off, and you can take a cab there." He shot a questioning look at his wife's maid, who was waiting outside Lady Borden's bedroom door, as if she was partially responsible for the woman's delay.

Lord Borden was an important man, fully aware of the urgency of the affairs surrounding him. He had a keen interest in politics, determined to get himself to the height of his ambitions by means of ruthlessly polishing his profile in the pages of high society. He had a plump, reasonably pretty wife whom he cared not one whit for as long as she had enough money to get her through next week's shopping. But for all his airs and egocentrism, he was a fair employer, even carelessly generous at times; and the staff had few complains of him, including Katherine Faye, Lady Borden's personal maid. Through observance and an instinct of what was expected of her, she managed to carry herself with a mixture of servitude and dignity, and a hint of modest impatience even when she felt her lady's needs were not being met quickly enough.

Katy would never, in fact, have been an employee here on the good side of London had she not fallen in with Herbert Frasier, Borden's nephew, who had stolen a jaunt into the slums and ended up procuring her services. All would have been well had he not become infatuated with her. In return for her discretion, Herbert's father landed her a position at Borden's manor, and there she had been ever since, while Herbert eventually and dutifully went through the list of proper, established young ladies with whom to settle down.

Now she found herself hurrying out after Lord and Lady Borden, dressed quite finely herself in green taffeta. As they bustled past another carriage some distance away which was just dropping off its passenger, Katy caught a glimpse of the man alighting from the corner of her eye. She halted in her step. Who was he, and why was he so familiar?

He must have spotted her too, and he paused in the midst of tipping the cab driver, turning to cast a passing glance at her. She gasped. Why, it was him!

Yes, it was, she marvelled, only less compactly-built, more upright, slender, with a gentlemanly carriage; and the same face was immaculate, handsome, clean-shaved. Devoid of any cruelty or ill-intent, and harbouring only a mild curiosity that grew stronger… The like a light bulb, recognition bloomed on his face, or at least she thought it did. The moment lasted for all of a second before he turned and retreated into the house.

It was to be two weeks or so before she saw him again. This time he was a guest at a party in celebration of Herbert's twenty-fifth birthday. The Frasier manor was lit up magnificently, and Herbert and his fiancée (they were due to be wed in a month's time) were constantly heaped with congratulations and approving nods from elderly aunts and uncles. Katy was quite unoccupied once Lord and Lady Borden began making their obligatory social rounds; she would not be needed anymore for quite a while. Milling absently around, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible as a proper lady's maid should be, she bumped quite accidentally into Herbert, who turned and was struck with a terrible moment of awkwardness. But not quite as awkward as she felt – for on his side was the man whom she had once known as Edward Hyde.

"Ah. Kat – Katherine." Herbert fumbled with his handkerchief. "Glad to see you're doing well. I – I must be going now." He made to leave, but the other man stopped him.

"Herbert, you have not introduced me to the…to the lady."

"Right. Right. Erm – Katherine, this is – pardon me – this is Dr Jekyll." With this hasty introduction the young man left, sweating rather obviously.

Katy blinked. She could not tear her eyes away from him. "Doctor…?" His dark eyes said that, yes, he knew her; and he even held out a hand. Dizzily she extended hers, and he kissed it.

"No – please, I – I'm not really a lady, I don't – you shouldn't be seen with me." She was red in the face; she could not help it. He was so handsome, and so inaccessible suddenly. Yet seconds later she was waltzing in his arms as if she was an eligible young woman of class instead of a humble servant.

"My dear Katy," he said at last. "Or is it Katherine now?"

Her cheeks burned, "You are almost a stranger," she whispered. "I think I knew you better when I was a whore, and you were Edwar – "

"Sshhh! Do not ever mention that name in the presence of decent society. You know that man as a friend; the rest of London knows him as a murderer."

Her head whirled as they spun around the room. "And all this while the murderer is in their midst."

"I know – do you think I don't know!" A flash of intense hatred for his other life tightened his features, then passed. "But it is something I have vowed to live with – the man you were acquainted with is no more."

"No more? But he lives inside you."

"Yes, Katy, but I have found a way to control that monster. A drug whose formula is known only to me. Sometimes I feel as if I am succeeding, for his dark urging voice grows dimmer, less dormant. Yet – occasionally – I feel him rising, begging to be let out…the product of a monstrous experiment…. "

As she studied his countenance Katy glimpsed the weariness, the desperation beneath the flawlessly composed exterior. She could not help but pity him.

"Jekyll," she said. "What is your first name…good sir?"

A wry grin darted across his lips. He remembered their very first encounter.

"_Talk, woman," he said._

"_About…what, sir?"_

"_Anything. I don't care."_

"_What is your name, good sir?"_

"Henry," he replied. The music ended; the room stopped spinning.

She smiled softly. "Thank you for the dance…Dr Henry Jekyll."

He shook his head. "Please. Just Henry."

"Henry." She smiled, and he returned the smile – but it was abruptly torn apart by a convulsive tremor that he barely managed to control.

"Katy," he breathed. "Katy, I must go. I must leave now." And as he said those words another trembling fit overcame him, running through his whole frame – and then he flung himself away from her, running wildly through the hall, pale and frantic and shivering, his composure fallen away like a dead skin.

It was the last she ever saw of Henry Jekyll.

It would be many months later before she saw him in the news, about his ties to the murderous Edward Hyde who was supposedly the doctor's protégé. Astounding for a respectable man of his noble career, they said; absolutely shocking, but they pitied him also. Poor Jekyll, to have made a poor judgment that doomed him finally at the hands of the brutal Hyde.

Katherine saw the picture and felt tears burning her eyes, fingers tracing the familiar contours of the handsome face, her tears wetting the newspaper. "But I knew you," she whispered. "I would have loved both of you…but you hid yourself, from a world that only knows how to judge without knowing. And it killed you in the end. Ah, Henry, Edward Hyde, if only you had not had to hide yourself from me!"

Unimportant footnote (for those who are interested): the characteristics for Hyde and Jekyll were both partially inspired by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Leopold (of Kate & Leopold), respectively. At least, I was thinking of him when I wrote the story. Quite by accident, I might add.


End file.
